The present invention relates to routing communications to parties who may be located at any one of plural sites, and more particularly to a method of routing a received telephone call in parallel to sites at which a called party may be located to avoid delays in connecting the called party to the received call.
Busy individuals, especially those in companies with several work sites and/or who want to be contacted at home or office, would like to be connected to an incoming telephone call directed to them as quickly as possible. However, when the individual may be located at any one of plural sites the delays in connecting the individual to the call, if the connection can made at all, can be significant. For example, a message service or receptionist can take an incoming call and transfer it to the individual if the individual's location is known. If the location is not known, separate calls may be placed sequentially to each location where the individual may be located. The time delays inherent in this method are obvious.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a novel method for routing a call to a called party who may be located at any one of plural sites which avoids delays in connecting the called party to the received call and thereby obviates the problems of the prior art.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a novel method for routing a communication to a party in which a database is searched when a communication is received in order to identify plural sites where the party may be located from among a multiplicity of sites to which the communication can be sent and in which parallel connections are initiated simultaneously to each of the identified sites.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide a novel method for routing a call received at a switch in which a controller at the switch uses a data base to identify plural sites where the called party may be located from among a multiplicity of sites to which the switch can be connected and causes the switch to initiate parallel connections from the switch to the identified sites, in which the received call is routed through the switch to a one of the sites at which the called party responds to the initiated connections, and thereafter the initiated connections from the switch to the other of the identified plural sites are disestablished.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a novel method for routing a communication to a party who may be located at any one of plural sites to which the communication can be sent and in which parallel connections are initiated simultaneously to each of the sites which may be any of a wireless switch connection, a mobile telephone base, an office telephone, a telephone in a manufacturing facility, an office computer, a home computer and a home telephone.
These and many other objects and advantages of the present invention will be readily apparent to one skilled in the art to which the invention pertains from a perusal of the claims, the appended drawings, and the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments.